Traditionally, many families, as well as friends, enjoy meeting and gathering outdoors for picnics and the like. In fact, most parks and recreational areas provide limited picnic facilities such as picnic tables and, possibly, grills on which to cook. However, other than these limited picnic facilities, individuals have had to bring with them all of the other traditional picnic items sufficient to enjoy themselves at a remote facility generally away from their homes. The need to thus bring along all of the various picnic items, for example, forks, knives, spoons, plates, cups, ketchup, mustard, etc., has continuously posed problems with respect to managing the carrying and storing of all of the items, as well as not forgetting any of the items. In variably, some items are either forgotten or, if brought along, not found among the many items brought to the picnic site.
Numerous attempts have been made to provide organizers which efficiently store and handle dinner and lunch items such as plates, knives, forks, etc. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 696,790, 1,458,679 and 1,235,097 all disclose some type of lunch or dinner kit, pail or trunk which can store the various items. However, all of these known kits have numerous disadvantages when it comes to picnic use. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,458,679 and 1,235,097 both make use of a suitcase-like trunk which stores items on both the cover as well as the base portion. In order to access any item therefor, the trunk lid must be either continuously opened or closed or somehow kept open. Under outdoor conditions, this is often difficult to do as the wind would often blow the trunk lid closed. Still further, these known lunch kits are disadvantageously simply set on a table or the like and are subject to being knocked off the picnic table during the various activities that often occur at a picnic. Similarly, the dinner pail described in U.S. Pat. No. 696,790 suffers many of the same disadvantages in that it too is simply placed on a table and can thus be easily knocked over.
Another known camp kit is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 177,766. This camp kit provides a trunk-like cabinet which stores various camping items. However, as was noted above with respect to U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,458,679 and 1,235,097, this camp kit likewise is cumbersome and difficult to use in a picnic environment. In fact, all of these known references are directed more toward providing a secure carrying case for campers to travel with rather than meeting the specific demands of picnic usage.